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Topic: Memory cards (Read 2136 times)

Shooting an airshow at the weekend I was having to change cards a lot (file sizes of my older Sony DSLR were smaller so it was less of a problem). I'm after 1 or more higher capacity cards, prices of 16-32GB cards have finally come down to a level that doesn't make me shudder.

Looking online I could get 2 SanDisk Ultra 30Mb/s 16GB cards for about £55. Or 1 SanDisk Extreme 400x UDMA 32Gb card for £67. My question is: will I notice a difference in read/write speeds? The only times write speed may be an issue is shooting planes or Motorsport where I have used a high speed burst and tried to review shots while the buffer was still emptying. Read speed copying images to a pc is less important to me provided it doesn't take too long. Alternate cards people can recommend are also welcome.

I have Lexar 400X (60MB/s) and 1000X (150MB/s) cards, and there is a significant difference in write speed and burst performance. The 7D requires firmware 2.0.3 to take full advantage of 1000x UDMA 7 CF cards, but you can really see the difference.

If you want to shoot bursts as fast as the camera can do it, you need the fast cards.

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On a 7D I've done the 400x or 533x cards - and yes, you'll notice the speed difference compared to the 30MB cards if you're doing high speed continuous shooting.

Lots of options on cards, make sure you get 'authentic' ones though if going for SanDisk or other top brands. I've used ADATA and Transend without issues on Canon cameras.

Interesting about Transend. I've seen a lot of them about on the internet, but their prices have always made me wonder what was wrong, or maybe just different about them for them to be that much cheaper.

Long time ago I did test myself, I had cheap-o card (A-data, transcend or something, 66x or such), and my friend bought fancy Lexar 400x. I compared buffer fill time on my 7D (with the old FW), and for the cheap-slow I got 16 or 17 pictures before the buffer was full, and with the Lexar I got 17 or 18.

And the Lexar was ~3x the price, so at the time it was no brainer to get cheap ones. Now with new FW (and I bought 5D3 too) I should think about upgrading.